Stephen Malkmus on the Pavement Legacy

You know Stephen Malkmus. Well, there's a chance you might not know him. Or even his bands, for that matter — the most famous of which, Pavement, had a few hits in the nineties, but remains revered in an almost god-like fashion by a certain segment of Generation X music nerds. Though if you're a fan of contemporary indie-rock bands, from Animal Collective to Grizzly Bear, Parquet Courts to Yuck, you know Stephen Malkmus. That's because his bands, including the Jicks, with whom he's releasing a new album, Wig Out at Jagbags, tomorrow, are nothing if not a seminal force in rock music.

On a recent afternoon, during the holiday season, we rang up Malkmus at his home in Portland, Oregon, and the 47-year-old father of two was sprightly, if not occasionally loopy, when discussing the new Jicks album, the capitalistic greed that pervaded nineties culture, and why Pavement is the coolest.

ESQUIRE.COM: Hey, Stephen. It's Dan. How are you?

STEPHEN MALKMUS: I'm fine, Dan.

ESQ: I really enjoyed the new Jicks album. Nicely done, sir.

SM: Thank you!

ESQ: I'm from Chicago so I also really appreciated the "jagbag" reference in the album title. It has a special place in the Chicago lexicon. Frankly, I'm surprised more people around the country don't use it.

SM: I don't think they do at all, really. I mean, I didn't know what it was until a friend of mine called someone it on a fantasy basketball website board we share. It was like the pied piper, you know. I just had to go toward it.

ESQ: It's quite the beautiful word. And you've now brought it to the masses.

SM: Someone had to do it. It rhymes. It's all there, you know? You know what it is without really having to ask. Unless you're like European or something. Then they're really confused.

ESQ: Album titles — Pavement's legendary Slanted and Enchanted comes to mind — seem to be another outlet for your creative whimsy.

SM: Sorry, hold on one sec. I'm sending out some Christmas packages and it's a little hectic as you can imagine.

ESQ: It's that time of year.

SM: Yeah, it's not the best time to release an album for that reason. Not only competing with Christmas records and stuff.

ESQ: Well, it's a January album so you guys can kick off the new year with your album.

SM: That's true. No one is really putting anything else out at that time surprisingly. At least that week. Until there's 49 next things. So the question was...

ESQ: About album titles.

SM: Yeah. Well, they're another chance to get a point across about what you're doing. There are all these decisions that are made in art. There are ways you can try to make it better, I guess. Or reflect our worldview about the absurdity of everything and the reality of it, too. We tried to do something different. Thinking outside the jagbag box. Always.

ESQ: We should probably talk about the music on Wig Out at Jagbags. On both this and the last Jicks album, Mirror Traffic, you guys have toed the line between being jammy and more reined-in musically.

SM: Well, when it's a live environment and you're just playing with friends in a basement where it all starts, that's more free-form. But when you think about getting dressed for the party or whatever — which is what it is. Sometimes we wear our torn jeans and headbands and there's carpets on the floor, but often we dress up and we wear our nice clothes. And that's how the record is. Even though Wig Out at Jagbags is the title and sounds a little off-the-hook and unhinged, there is more of an attempt to tidy it. And tighten it. And clean it up. I dunno. Those are really not great words for rock 'n' roll. I've said before, doing jammy stuff on a record — it's possible. But if you have limited time, if you're just moving kind of quick, it's really got it or it doesn't. So in a live studio, it's kind of a risk to hope for that.

ESQ: Speaking of "jammy" songs, I was actually a bit surprised to see references to the Grateful Dead in both the video for "Cinnamon and Lesbians" and in the lyrics for "Lariat." Is Stephen Malkmus a Deadhead?

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SM: For some reason those two songs came out first. It's kind of odd being not a fan. I mean, I kind of appreciate the Grateful Dead for what they are as a weird American kind of... five guys making a sound. I don't really get the whole cult.

ESQ: The whole culture behind the band didn't speak to you?

SM: Well, sometimes there is sort of a counterculture, do-it-yourself side to them that I appreciated. But you take the good with the bad. There was certainly some kind of watered-down side to it all by the end, right? Not to mention depressing drug use that's sort of a cautionary tale, a cautionary baby boomer story. I watched Jobs with Ashton Kutcher. And you've got Ashton Kutcher playing Steve Jobs. And he's walking around on bare feet and kind of singing hippy-dippy stuff. But he's also this voracious capitalist. And the Dead were, too. They were definitely a money-making baby boomer thing. They were peace and love and then they grew up. Or they never were maybe. They were always the children of their parents.

ESQ: You recently spent some time living in Berlin, which is where you and the Jicks recorded your new album. You've mentioned you felt isolated there.

SM: People keep to themselves there when they're not tripping off their heads in a dance club. Which I wasn't very often. I was there with my family. When you go to a new place and you don't speak the language of course and nobody knows who you are and you don't have a history with the place, you start seeing yourself in... I don't know Chicago, but you probably know every corner and the vibe of every place just about after a few years. And you are in that place. But when you're in a new place you're just kind of floating. I like that. From being on tour, I tend to get a little depressed when I'm in the same place for too long. So I guess I'm not an earth-bound type of person. I'm more air.

ESQ: Jumping back to "Lariat." In it you sing of "listening to the music of the best decade ever." Obviously that's a subjective preference.

SM: Well yeah, of course.

ESQ: But for many people of my generation that's the nineties. Though it must be different for you to look back at that era now considering how deeply embedded in pop culture you were. Mostly, I think it's intriguing how people quickly forget the things that pissed them off back then and instead focus on the good times.

SM: It's true. I want to say it was fun. But that's probably just because I was in my mid-twenties and I was in a band and I had a purpose. I was doing something that most people would give their foot to do. But if you think back, heck yeah it was uncertain. I could do some research and come up with a point that it was a really vapid, horrible time. [Laughs] I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't feel that way because I am into myself or whatever. It was good to me. But I could see being on the outside of it and saying there was no low culture and George Bush and just money. I remember people used to just be looking at their stock portfolios and stuff during the Internet boom. And one of my least favorite types of person is the speculator on stocks that makes money out of nothing or somebody that buys Internet domain names and then sells them. And then we're supposed to think they're awesome or whatever. I think there was a lot of that spirit. Not that it's gone away. [Laughs] I remember it was a consumerist Internet bubble and money for money's sake.

ESQ: The spirit of Pavement seems to have carried on into the 2000s. Is it surprising to you how wildly influential you've been for countless contemporary indie-rock bands?

SM: I imagine those groups, they're people like us who like the same tradition of music. Certainly Pavement and I — it all starts with the records you play at your house with your friends when you're drinking or you're cranking it up in your twenties. It's a real approachable art form. It's not high art. You can bond over it with friends. You can do it yourself easily. You don't need really expensive tools to be in a band. Everything's there. So I think all those bands — we're just related because we like the same stuff. There's a line from the Velvet Underground and even the blues and punk rock and post-punk. It's all related, I guess.

ESQ: Speaking of the Velvet Underground, you've mentioned in the past that Lou Reed is a major influence on your career. Were you affected by his recent passing?

SM: I was sad. Especially when legends die. But realistically, he was old and unhealthy and he made it further than a lot of his band. Well, not all of them. I consider Sterling Morrison to be a big part. And Nico of course was an early casualty. I just think that they were the coolest band and a positive cool. In a really good way. In the ways of art and just confidence and sarcasm and venom and beauty. It was all there. The whole thing. And really experimental for their time. And poppy at times, too. You can find them in the middle of Bob Dylan and some noise band. They're in there somehow. It's a good place to be.

ESQ: It's been a few years since Pavement reunited for a tour. Having some separation, how do you feel looking back on the experience?

SM: It was totally awesome. Again, I don't want to sound like I won an Oscar and I just want to thank everyone and I'm so grateful and everybody that I work with is amazing. But the fact is everybody from the booking agents to the crowd to the flight attendants in first class, just kidding... It was smooth and really fun. I had a really great time. Bringing that back alive was fun. Just to hang out with the band. It felt the same, which is crazy that it could. And everyone was in a good mood. Which is not always the cause in a touring band.

ESQ: I take it that you don't see it happening again in the near future?

SM: Yeah. We're not doing anything now. I've got the Jicks going on and the Pavement guys are hanging out waiting to do it again. Just kidding. That was like 10 years after the band broke up and it was a perfect time. I dunno. To just keep doing it, it could be cool, but it's cooler not to do it. And we're all about being cool. [Laughs] I'm joking. But it's more respect to the brand and to the people who went at that time. We want it to be a luxury item.

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